🌟 QUICK INTRO
I’m Seb and this is my new newsletter. It covers all the big news regarding European Tech every week.
This week there’s been a new European unicorn, Lovable has been getting offers at a $4bn valuation, Klarna is set to IPO again and much more!
I’ve also launched a paid version of this newsletter that will include extra articles that go in a lot more depth on specific issues. Thanks to those who have signed up already! Sign up here: https://scaling-europe.beehiiv.com/upgrade
This week on The Scaling Europe Show I spoke to
Bill Dobie, Founder at Sedna
Will Wells, Partner at SpeedInvest
Guy Ward Thomas, Partner at DN Capital
Max Sinclair, Founder at Azoma
Saul Klein, Founder at Phoenix Court
💰 BIG ROUNDS
German orthopaedic company Ortivity received €200m funding led by Apheon, a pan-European private equity investor, with participation from Unigestion and other new investors. Read more here.
Dutch no-code website builder Framer raised a $100m Series D at a $2bn valuation, led by existing investors Meritech and Atomico. Read more here.
Irish medtech ProVerum raised $80m led by MVM Partners to commercialise its solution for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Read more here.
UK-based Paragraf, a graphene-based semiconductor manufacturer, raised a $55m Series C from Mubadala. Read more here.
UK-based Attio raised a $52m Series B to fuel its AI-first CRM platform. The round was led by GV, with participation from Redpoint Ventures, 01A, Point Nine, and Balderton Capital. Read more here.
Spanish AI startup Maisa raised a $25m Seed led by Creandum. The company is building AI agents to help enterprises roll out AI. Read more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
Danish startup Interhuman AI, a startup building the first social intelligence layer for AI systems, raised a €2m pre-seed.
Swiss AI startup Zenline AI raised a $1.6m pre-seed to help European retailers compete with Amazon and Temu.
Czech retail automation startup Buylo raised €640k to scale checkout tech.
📰 STARTUP NEWS
Lovable
The Swedish vibe-coding startup is getting investment offers at $4bn, over double what it raised at a few weeks ago.
The company is not said to be engaging with these offers currently but the FT is reporting that Anton is "weighing fundraising options for the coming months".
Lovable recently hit $100m ARR after just 8 months.
CEO Anton Osika said he expects the company to be at $250m ARR by the end of the year, and hopefully at $1bn ARR within 12 months.
Great scoop from Tim Bradshaw and Ivan Levingston, which you can read in the FT here.
Bitpanda
The Austrian Crypto company Bitpanda ruled out a London IPO in another blow to the city's capital markets.
In a recent discussion with the FT CEO Eric Demuth said that the company would either list in New York and Frankfurt:
“Currently, everybody’s moving away from the [London Stock Exchange]” he said.
Read more here.
Klarna
The fintech is once again getting itself ready to go public, this time targeting a $13bn valuation.
It was supposed to IPO earlier this year but postponed its plans indefinitely as a result of the Trump Tariffs.
At the time it was hoping to raise $1bn at a $15bn valuation, so the $13bn is a slight decrease. This could be to do with its increased net losses it announced recently:
$824m of revenue (+20% YoY)
$46m in losses before tax (vs $19m in Q2 last year)
Framer
Amsterdam-based Framer has become Europe's newest unicorn as a result of its $100m Series D round led by Meritech Capital and Atomico.
The business is now valued at $2bn and has g
>$50m ARR
Has been at break-even for the last year
>500k monthly active users
The company has successfully expanded into B2B and has signed clients like Miro, Perplexity, and Scale AI.
OrganOx
The UK Medtech that enables donor organs to be kept healthy outside the body before transplantation, has been sold to Japanese medical technology company (Terumo Corporation) for $1.5bn
The company is an Oxford University spin-out and is the largest acquisition of any UK university spinout so far.
It follows the sale of the university’s quantum computing start-up Oxford Ionics to US group IonQ in June for $1.1bn. Read more here.
Bunq
The Dutch challenger bank has been fined €2.6m fine for “serious deficiencies” in its anti-money laundering controls.
It relates to a period between January 2021 and May 2022, when according to the Dutch central bank, “Bunq did not sufficiently follow up on signals and irregularities in four customer files, resulting in money laundering risks not being detected or not being detected in time.”
In response, Bunq has made a formal objection. Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
Lakestar
Lakestar has raised a $265m continuation fund to enable it to both, provide liquidity into LPs and hold on to its strongest investments for longer.
The firm has raised over €1.7bn in total and has invested in 140+ companies, including the likes of Revolut, Poolside and Spotify.
Read more here.
New Deeptech fund from the CEO of Graphcore
The CEO and founder of Graphcore, Nigel Toon, is launching a new growth-stage deeptech fund alongside Ekaterina Almasque (ex-GPg at Finnish VC OpenOcean.)
The fund is called BlankPage Capita and will invest in Deeptech at the growth stage across Europe. Read more here.
SNÖ Ventures is shutting down
The Norwegian VC is shutting down with its three partners going their separate ways and raising their own funds.
The firm has deployed its first fund ($12m) and is in the midst of deploying its second $54m fund.
The firm shut down over strategic differences rather than poor performance according to the firm. You can read more here.
That’s all. Let me know what you think.
Seb